“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
Small-town community journalism is a different kind of beastie. There are things we do — we once ran an obituary for a beloved family pet — and things we don’t do — run headlines and mugshots of the gal we’ve nicknamed “The Eyelash Bandit” — that would never be considered at a big daily or even a city weekly. From time to time I get teased by fellow journalists about some of the stories that make it to print, like the “who moved the rocks at the cemetery” debacle and the “Dinosaur woman missing” headline that my friend Susan stuck to her refrigerator.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s normal to write stories about things like potholes and barking dogs, and then I stumbled across a U.K. Facebook page called “Angry People in Local Newspapers.” The page description reads, “A celebration of angry people posing ridiculously in their local newspapers. Also dull and weird local news.” I have found my tribe.
Recent favorites include the march around a coastal town to protest out-of-order streetlights that need to be fixed. Neighbors organized a mile-long “lighten our darkness” protest match along the affected areas of their coastal community, complete with a hand-painted “let there be light” banner.
I have yet to assemble a group in the middle of Main Street to glare at the camera and point at the potholes, but it could be fun.
Why is it entertaining to read stories about people having minor conniption fits over their rubbish bins? Because somewhere in the back of our minds, no matter how agitated and aggravated we feel, we know life is just too short to take everything so seriously, including — and maybe most especially — ourselves.
